Summary: So far, the Bush administration has shown it would like to resolve
its problems with North Korea and Iran the same way it did with Iraq: through
regime change. It is easy to see why. But the strategy is unlikely to work,
at least not quickly enough. A much broader approach -- involving talks, sanctions,
and the threat of force -- is needed.

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Richard N. Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was Director
of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff from 2001 to 2003.
This article is drawn from his recently published book, The Opportunity: America's
Moment to Alter History's Course.

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ARMED AND DANGEROUS

Although a third of the "axis of evil" is now occupied by U.S. forces,
the other two thirds -- North Korea and Iran -- remain clear threats to U.S.
interests. Consider North Korea: in February 2005, Pyongyang announced that
it had nuclear weapons, and it is now thought to have several of them, or at
least the material to build them. Over time, if the United States does nothing,
North Korea's arsenal will surely grow, as will the amount of its fissile material.
The results of this growth will be destabilizing and potentially disastrous:
a sizable North Korean nuclear arsenal might well stimulate similar weapons
programs in both Japan and South Korea, diminishing the region's stability.
The repercussions could also spread far beyond Northeast Asia if Pyongyang decides
to sell its new weapons or nuclear fuel for hard currency -- as it has with
drugs and missile technology in the past.

Iran, for its part, also has a nuclear weapons program, which may not be as
advanced as North Korea's but is much further along than almost anyone realized
only a few years ago. Building on efforts that began under the shah, Iran has
assembled many of the elements needed for a uranium-enrichment program with
military potential. Magnifying Washington's concern, Iran has a history of concealing
its nuclear program, as well as supporting terrorism and developing
medium-range missiles.

Thus far, the Bush administration has consistently shown that it would rather
resolve all of these challenges through regime change in Tehran and Pyongyang.
It is not hard to fathom why: regime change is less distasteful than diplomacy
and less dangerous than living with new nuclear states. There is only one
problem: it is highly unlikely to have the desired effect soon enough.

REVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION

Regime change allows a state to solve its problems with another state by removing
the offensive regime there and replacing it with a less offensive one.
In the case of North Korea or Iran, this would mean installing a regime that
either would not pursue nuclear weapons or, if it did, would be so different
in
character that the prospect would be much less worrisome.

Using regime change as a policy panacea is nothing new. Nor are the challenges
posed by repressive countries possessing threatening weaponry; these are
certainly not exclusively post-Cold War or post-September 11 phenomena. Indeed,
the Cold War itself can be understood as a prolonged confrontation with a state
of precisely this sort; the Soviet Union threatened the United States by what
it did beyond its borders and offended Americans by what it did within them.
So
had Nazi Germany and imperial Japan before it.

The Roosevelt administration ultimately chose to deal with Germany and Japan
through a policy of regime change, seeking not simply to defeat them on the
battlefield and reverse their conquests but to continue war until the regimes
in Berlin and Tokyo were ousted and something much better was firmly ensconced.
It took years of armed occupation and intrusive involvement in the internal
politics of both countries -- what is known today as nation building -- to
achieve that latter objective.

The U.S. approach to the Soviet Union, however, was markedly different. After
World War II, when Moscow emerged as Washington's principal global rival and
threat, "rollback" became something of a popular concept. Yet the
potential for a nuclear war in which there would be no winners regardless of
who struck first
tempered U.S. policy. Seeking regime change, or rollback, was deemed too risky,
even reckless, given what could result if a desperate Soviet leadership lashed
out with all the force at its disposal.

Simply acquiescing to Soviet behavior at home and abroad, however, was not
acceptable to Washington either. The result was a policy of "containment,"
which George Kennan (then a U.S. diplomat in Moscow) helped formulate in his
"long telegram," which ultimately found its way into this magazine
in 1947.
Containment was never as modest a policy as its critics alleged. Although it
prescribed resisting Moscow's attempts to spread communism and expand Soviet
influence, it also had a second, less cited dimension.

"It is entirely possible," Kennan wrote, "for the United States
to influence by its actions the internal developments, both within Russia and
throughout the
international Communist movement. ... The United States has it in its power
to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to
force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection
than [the Kremlin] has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to
promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up
or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power."

In other words, containment's second, subordinate goal was regime change. It
eventually achieved this end through incremental means. But this method was
so
gradual (it took more than 40 years to succeed) that it could better be understood
as regime evolution, and it took a back seat to containing Soviet
advances. Whereas regime change (as the Bush administration uses the term) tends
to be direct and immediate and to involve the use of military force or
covert action, as well as attempts to isolate both politically and economically
the government in question, regime evolution tends to be indirect and gradual
and to involve the use of foreign policy tools other than military force.

Advocates of regime change generally reject most, sometimes any, dealings with
the regime in question, lest the process of interaction or engagement somehow
buttress the offending government. Diplomacy is therefore marginalized, as it
has been in U.S. Cuba policy for 40 years, and as it has been more recently
in
U.S. policy toward both North Korea and Iran.

Regime evolution, however, accepts the need for give-and-take. The United States
carried out an active diplomacy with the Soviet Union throughout the
Cold War. It mattered not whether the policy was characterized as "peaceful
coexistence" or, somewhat more optimistically, as "detente";
either way, the
United States was prepared to deal with the Soviet Union when doing so served
U.S. interests. Containment took precedence over rollback, or regime change,
and influencing Soviet foreign policy took precedence over influencing Soviet
behavior at home. This did not mean the United States ignored questions of what
was going on inside the Soviet Union -- it did not, as evidenced by sustained
U.S. support for radio broadcasts addressed to the Soviet people, for
individual human rights cases, and for the right to emigrate. But Washington
did not accord these issues the same weight as Soviet foreign policy.

To understand how this process worked, consider arms control, one realm of
intense U.S-Soviet involvement. U.S. officials regularly negotiated with their
Soviet counterparts and entered into agreements to limit weapons, particularly
nuclear ones. Such a policy may have prolonged the Soviet regime, since it accorded
Moscow a unique and prominent international standing and placed curbs on a costly
arms race that might have hastened the regime's demise (given the country's
weak economic base). Still, successive U.S. administrations prudently deemed
avoiding war and regulating U.S.-Soviet arms competition higher goals.

A similar rationale motivated the United States' economic dealings with the
Soviet Union. Concern that bilateral trade could buttress the Soviet government
was overridden by the view that trade deals would also give the Soviets a stake
in better relations with the United States and the West and thereby rein in
any
Soviet temptation to challenge violently the status quo.

In the end, the Soviet regime did change. Historians will continue to debate
how much of this was due to internal flaws in the Soviet system and how much
resulted from U.S. and Western policy. The easy answer is that both forces were
effective. The important thing is that an end did come, and it came peacefully.
The third great conflict of the twentieth century, like the first two, ended
with the result desired by the United States. Unlike the outcomes of the first
two conflicts, however, this one was achieved without total war.

EASIER SAID THAN DONE

The Soviet experience holds important lessons for current U.S. foreign policy.
Removing odious leaders -- "regime ouster" -- is no easy thing. The
Soviet
Union survived for nearly three-quarters of a century. The United States found
it difficult to locate and arrest Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989 and
impossible to oust Mohamed Farah Aideed in Somalia in 1993. Fidel Castro remains
ensconced in Havana today.

Regime replacement, the second step in regime change, is even more difficult,
however. In the end, toppling Saddam Hussein was easy compared with putting
in
place a new Iraqi government that could run a secure, viable country. Although
the Iraq venture was made far more expensive and difficult than necessary by
Washington's poor planning and questionable decisions, it is possible it would
not have gone more smoothly even had Iraq's occupation been approached differently.
And occupations elsewhere will not be much easier. The rise of nationalism,
together with globalization (and the increased availability of
powerful means of resistance), may have doomed prolonged occupations of foreign
countries by sharply increasing their human, military, and economic costs.

Indeed, the uncertainties surrounding regime change make it an unreliable approach
for dealing with specific problems such as a nuclear weapons program
in an unfriendly state. Neither North Korea nor Iran appears to be on the brink
of dramatic domestic change. A decade ago, many believed that North Korea was
near collapse, yet the regime still stands, and it may persist for years more,
notwithstanding North Korea's impoverishment, its cruel and eccentric leadership,
and its utter lack of freedom. Iran, too, is unlikely to throw off its current
clerical leaders, despite their unpopularity. Even if these assessments ultimately
prove incorrect, regime change cannot be counted on to come quickly enough to
remove the nuclear threats now posed by these countries.

Unless, that is, the United States is prepared to invade them. But the expense
of this approach would be enormous. Pyongyang's conventional military power
could inflict great loss of life and physical destruction on South Korea, and
its nuclear weapons could obviously increase such costs dramatically. Many U.S.
military personnel (including some of the more than 30,000 currently stationed
in South Korea, along with reinforcements who would be sent) would lose their
lives. The United States could and would win such a war, but only at great cost
to itself, the region, and the rest of the world. The same goes for war with
Iran. That country is roughly the size of Alaska and has 70 million people,
roughly three times as many as Iraq -- more than enough to make any occupation
costly, miserable, and futile for the United States.

Using more indirect tools to bring about regime evolution, instead of change,
might well work but would take years, if not decades. Achieving regime
evolution requires the strategic use of television, radio, and the Internet.
Admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) could be offered in return for
fundamental economic reforms, ones that are, by their nature, also political.
Rhetorical support for change can also help, as can direct assistance to nongovernmental
organizations and other elements of civil society. Economic and political incentives
should be made available to the target country if it is
willing to adopt policies that reduce threats and that create more freedom and
space for independent economic and political activity; in the absence of such
changes, targeted sanctions should be considered. Trade and personnel exchanges
can open a closed society to new ideas. Over the past few decades, there have
been dozens of cases of successful regime evolution in the former Soviet bloc,
Latin America, and Asia, and there is no reason such patterns could not be
repeated elsewhere if the United States makes the investment and takes the necessary
time. Odious or dangerous regimes should never be neglected, but the safest
and best way to encourage their moderation or implosion is to smother them with
policies that force them to open up to and deal with the outside
world.

MILITARY MEANS

One other alternative for dealing with Pyongyang's and Tehran's nuclear programs
is the limited use of military force. Such attacks could take two
forms. One is a preemptive strike, akin to what Israel did in 1967 when, learning
of an imminent Egyptian attack, it hit the Egyptians first. For such
an attack to work, however, the intelligence assessment of the threat must be
near 100 percent accurate, confirming that the danger is in fact imminent and
that there are no other available means to stop it. Under such rare circumstances,
it is widely viewed that a state enjoys the right to strike
before it is certain to be struck. This is preemption in the classical sense
-- something quite different from President George W. Bush's use of the term,
which in fact is better understood as prevention.

The problem for U.S. policymakers today is that neither situation -- neither
that with North Korea nor that with Iran -- is likely to satisfy the conditions
that warrant a preemptive strike in the traditional sense. Instead, available
intelligence will probably be questionable, the threats uncertain and in no
way
clearly imminent, and the military option but one of several policies available.
Under such circumstances, any U.S. attack would be preventive, not
preemptive -- the use of force against a gathering but not imminent threat.

There are some precedents for preventive strikes, such as Israel's attack on
Iraq's Osirak nuclear complex in 1981 or the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq some
two
decades later. But preventive attacks always pose serious problems. For one
thing, it is all but impossible to get international support for them. For another,
they are quite difficult to carry out successfully; indeed, given the secrecy
surrounding nuclear programs, the level of intelligence needed to effectively
cripple them through a military attack can be impossible to attain.

It is this last consideration -- of feasibility -- that is likely to determine
the use of preventive strikes in the future. It is not just a question of what
constitutes North Korea's nuclear weapons program or where it is. Washington
could in principle strike other targets valued by Pyongyang to coerce it into
meeting U.S. and international demands regarding its nuclear programs. It is
not clear, however, whether Washington could get political support for such
attacks or that they would have the desired effect. In fact, South Korea, Japan,
China, and Russia are likely to oppose any action that could lead to a war on
the Korean Peninsula that would kill hundreds of thousands and destroy the economy
of South Korea and of the region more generally.

Using preventive strikes to destroy Iran's developing weapons program would
also be much easier said than done, given the imperfect nature of the intelligence
on Iran's program and the operational challenges of attacking its dispersed
and buried nuclear facilities. U.S. strikes might succeed in destroying part
of Iran's weapons program and set it back by months or even years. But even
if this were to occur, Iran would surely reconstitute its program in a manner
that would make future strikes even more difficult. Moreover, Iran has the ability
to retaliate by unleashing terrorism (using Hamas and Hezbollah) against Israel
and the United States or by promoting instability in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
Saudi Arabia. A U.S. strike on Iran would also further anger the Arab and Muslim
worlds, where many already resent the double standard of U.S. and international
acceptance of Israel's and India's nuclear weapons programs. Much of the Iranian
population, currently alienated from the regime, would likely rally around it
in the case of a foreign attack, making external efforts to bring about regime
change that much more unlikely to succeed. Attacking Iran would also lead to
sharp and possibly prolonged increases in the price of oil, which could trigger
a global economic crisis. Nor would the United States avoid these costs if Israel
carried out the strike (a scenario suggested by Vice President Dick Cheney in
January 2005), since Israel would be widely viewed as doing the United States'
bidding.

TALK FIRST

Another alternative policy for meeting the nuclear challenge posed by Iran
and North Korea would be to emphasize diplomacy. North Korea and Iran could
be
promised a number of benefits, including economic assistance, security assurances,
and greater political standing, if they satisfied U.S. and international concerns
regarding their nuclear programs. They could also be presented with clear penalties
in case they fail to cooperate adequately. Such penalties could include diplomatic
and economic sanctions and, in the most dire circumstances, military attack.

It is far from clear, however, whether any such agreement could actually be
negotiated. North Korea may well decide that possessing nuclear weapons is the
best way to deter a U.S.-led military intervention and to earn hard currency
-- and thus refuse to give up such weapons. Iran, too, may decide that nuclear
weapons are too useful as a deterrent and a means to acquire regional influence.
Even if these states agreed to give up their weapons, moreover, there is no
guarantee that they would honor their agreements. North Korea has already breached
a 1992 accord with South Korea to keep the peninsula free of
nuclear weapons and violated the spirit (if not necessarily the letter) of the
1994 U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework. Iran, for its part, has failed to
fulfill its obligations to notify the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
of its uranium-enrichment activities, as it is required to under a safeguards
agreement Tehran signed pursuant to the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Given their records, North Korea and Iran could be expected to exploit the
time any negotiation would buy them to enhance their nuclear capabilities. Even
absent such bad faith, essentially rewarding a country such as North Korea with
alternative energy sources and various political and economic benefits for its
having once invested in nuclear weapons could have the perverse effect of encouraging
proliferation elsewhere. It might give other countries an incentive
to follow suit in the belief that they, too, will eventually be rewarded for
their bad behavior.

Despite these problems, however, diplomacy remains an attractive option, both
because it could succeed and because only by first making a good-faith effort
will the United States have a chance of getting the necessary regional and international
backing for then pursuing a more confrontational tack.

In fact, the United States (working with China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea)
has already initiated a series of discussions with North Korea in order to
convince it to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang, however, rejected
the incentives Washington offered it last year, and the failure to
include any clear penalties in the deal put little pressure on North Korea to
compromise. Neither the carrot nor the stick was adequate. In addition, the
Bush administration lost valuable time by resisting the prospect of bilateral
talks with North Korea. This was a mistake; it matters little whether China,
Japan, South Korea, and Russia are physically in the room so long as the United
States coordinates its policies with them.

The best path available now is to continue to work with these states on a diplomatic
package that would give North Korea security assurances, energy
assistance, and specified political and economic benefits in exchange for forgoing
its nuclear programs (fuel and weapons alike) and agreeing to robust
international inspections. Sequence matters in all this; it is unrealistic to
expect North Korea to satisfy all nuclear-related requirements before it
receives any benefits. Washington and its partners should also agree on what
economic and political sanctions would be imposed on Pyongyang if it failed
to accept such an agreement by a specified date or if it crossed a red line,
such as by testing a nuclear device.

China's role is central to any such diplomatic undertaking. Although Beijing's
influence on North Korea is limited, it is greater than any other country's.
China is the source of much of North Korea's energy and is its principal trading
partner. But Beijing, while willing to apply some pressure, seems
reluctant to insist, possibly out of fear that if Kim Jong Il's regime begins
to collapse, war will break out and refugees will flood China. As a result,
China has seemed more interested in placing a lid on the North Korea problem
than in actually resolving it.

Washington must try to persuade Beijing to use all of its influence to convince
Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program. To this end, China's leaders
should understand that the North Korea problem is a test case of China's willingness
to become a true strategic partner of the United States. It would
also help if the U.S. government were to reassure China's leaders about its
long-term thinking on Northeast Asia, namely, that the United States is firmly
opposed to the emergence of any new nuclear weapons state in the region, be
it Japan, a unified Korea, or Taiwan.

Addressing Iran's nuclear program will require an international proposal offering
Tehran the nuclear fuel it says it requires for power generation, but
not direct access to or control of the fuel itself. Such an offer could be made
to Iran alone. But to improve its attractiveness, the deal should be put
forward as a new global policy, in which no entity other than the five acknowledged
nuclear weapons states and the IAEA would be permitted to control
nuclear fuel. To secure Iran's agreement, the country, which is currently subject
to numerous U.S. economic sanctions, could be offered various economic
inducements and security assurances akin to those being considered for North
Korea. In exchange for these benefits, Iran (again like North Korea) would be
expected to convince the world, by allowing intrusive inspections, that it is
not developing nuclear weapons or producing the fissile material they require.
U.S. policy currently seems to be headed in this direction, but Washington needs
to offer more than simply ending its blockage of Iran's admission to the
WTO or its purchase of spare parts for aircraft. For their part, Europe and
Russia, as well as China, must commit to meaningful sanctions in the event Iran
violates the agreement. This is a moment for creative specificity, not ambiguity.

Even if such tactics are used, it remains possible (some would say likely)
that diplomacy with Iran will fail, either because of insufficient international
support or because many in Iran want to proceed with uranium enrichment or develop
nuclear weapons regardless of the cost. As with North Korea, however,
the diplomatic option is nonetheless worth pursuing, given the costs of every
other approach and given that the only chance for building international
support for (or even acceptance of) a more aggressive strategy is to first make
a good-faith effort to resolve matters diplomatically.

LIVING WITH PROLIFERATION

There is always the option of accepting a de facto nuclear status for North
Korea and Iran. This is the default option if regime change yields no dramatic
result, the military option is rejected, and diplomacy fails. And it would be
similar to what has already become the U.S. and international approach to
Israel, India, and Pakistan. There would have to be, however, one big difference:
given the bellicose history and nature of both North Korea and
Iran, the United States would need to introduce an extra element of deterrence
to discourage either government from using a nuclear weapon or transferring
critical technologies, fuel, or weapons to other states or to terrorist groups.
To this end, the United States should declare publicly that any government that
uses weapons of mass destruction, threatens to use them, or knowingly transfers
WMD or key materials to third parties opens itself up to the strongest
reprisals, including attack and removal from power. This message should be accompanied
by a concerted diplomatic effort to get the other major powers to
sign on to such a policy. Such moves would add teeth to Security Council resolutions
and international conventions that already forbid states from
facilitating nuclear terrorism in any way.

Even with such international statements, this approach would be inherently
risky: accepting a North Korean nuclear arsenal might mean accepting the
perpetuation of a desperate, failing government that could well try secretly
to transfer nuclear material to terrorists in exchange for much-needed money.
Accepting the existence of a nuclear-armed Iran implies a similar bargain. And
in both cases, deterrence might not work.

What is more, even if deterrence did work, accepting and learning to live with
a nuclear-armed North Korea or Iran would not be cost free. As suggested above,
if North Korea is allowed to retain nuclear weapons, this could prompt Japan,
South Korea, or other states to seek to acquire them as well. Keeping the peace
in a nuclear Northeast Asia would be no easy feat given the historical animosities,
the latent rivalries, and the lack of institutional mechanisms for
promoting regional confidence and stability.

The same goes for the Middle East. A nuclear Iran could well cause Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, and even Iraq to consider developing a similar capability,
although it might take them longer to catch up due to their lack of an advanced
industrial base. And keeping the peace between a half dozen nuclear-armed
states that are suspicious of, if not downright hostile toward, one another
would be extremely difficult. The emergence of new nuclear weapons states would
also dramatically increase the risk that these weapons or their components would
fall into the hands of terrorists, whether by accident or design.

ALL TOGETHER NOW

Regime change, limited military action, diplomacy, and deterrence can all be
considered as alternative policies. They are better understood, however, as
components of a single comprehensive approach toward states such as North Korea
and Iran. Deterrence is a way to make the best of a bad situation. Military
action or, more precisely, the threat of it can buttress diplomatic prospects.
But diplomacy should be the heart of U.S. policy toward both countries --
because it could succeed, because it must be shown to have failed before there
is any chance of garnering support for other policies, and because all the
other options are so unattractive.

As for regime change, it is best viewed as a complement to diplomacy and deterrence.
It is essential to appreciate not only the limits of regime change
but also its nature. A refusal to engage tyrannies allows them to wrap themselves
in nationalism and to maintain control; offering regimes enhanced security and
economic and political interaction if they meet specified requirements can deny
them their rationale for tight control and their ability to maintain it. A foreign
policy that chooses to integrate, not isolate, despotic regimes can be the Trojan
horse that moderates their behavior in the short run and their nature in the
long run. It is time Washington put this thinking to the test, toward what remains
of the axis of evil. Delay is no
longer an option, and drift is not a strategy.